Students learn to turn differences into ... fruit salad

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — The ambassador of the bananas came to talk with the community of oranges to see how the two fruits could peacefully coexist on the imaginary island of Fruitopia.

Sydney Werness, 17, a junior at Patrick Henry High School, was the banana ambassador who met the oranges to discuss life on their diverse yet segregated island.

The whole exercise was part of a role-playing game among members of Roanoke’s expanding refugee and immigrant populations that taught methods for communicating across language and cultural barriers and forming communities, like a real-life Fruitopia.

Words of Dari, Swahili, Spanish and English weaved together as students talked and worked with art supplies and fruit to create personalities for their imaginary communities. A frowny face was made from pipe cleaners on a banana. Feathers popped out from the head of an orange with googly eyes.

More than 20 high school and college students gathered at Belmont Library on a Saturday afternoon in May to participate. Some were refugees, others grew up in Roanoke. Many had never met before.

Each fruit group faced challenges in their homeland, which led them to Fruitopia alongside other fruit groups that had persecuted them. The project mimicked the immigrants’ own experiences of leaving home and seeking refuge in a new country.

The activity was organized by Hardwired Global, a nonprofit organization based in Richmond that is traveling throughout the commonwealth this year, targeting areas with high refugee populations, and using their simulation workshop to support social integration of refugees and newcomers into schools and communities. They are partnering with resettlement organizations, including Commonwealth Catholic Charities in Roanoke which, as of May , has helped resettle 438...